A YA LITERATURE SALON

11.20.08

I got tickets for Twilight. I’m going on Sunday night. I hope it won’t be too crowded and also that I won’t hear too many spoilers before then!

I just have a few more things to get off my chest about the book…Bella and Edward’s, er, failure to consummate their relationship really bothered me throughout New Moon and Eclipse. I kept thinking that if these were adult books, they would have done it already! I really dislike it when I can tell I’m reading a children’s book. I think a mark of a good children’s book is that it is not noticeably written for children. The topics can be kid-friendly, but the action should be believable in context and the reader shouldn’t get the sense that the author is talking down to the audience. For instance, Harry Potter was about kids/teenagers, but the books made me feel scared, curious, and amazed. There was never a time when I thought, geez, when is Harry going to boink Ginny? Or, when is another character going to bite it already?

Many aspects of the Twilight series just felt too gentle, like the author was trying to please too many people (parents, Edward fans, Jacob fans, etc.) I also wonder how her religious beliefs influenced her portrayal of Bella in relation to men.

In the end, all of my grumpiness about sex/no sex in Twilight came and bit me in the butt. A middle-school girl at the library told me her parents wouldn’t let her read Breaking Dawn because of the s-e-x. Oh man, I thought, if kids this young and younger are reading these books, it’s a good thing that the author was so conservative! Bella may be a sketchy role model, but at least she won’t inspire girls to sleep with the first vampire they meet. They’ll at least wait until they’re married to the vampire. And that’s ok, right????

I agree that I don’t want to feel like I’m obviously reading a book that’s been censored for young people — especially when it’s YA as opposed to mid-grade. I didn’t think of Twilight this way — I saw the lack of sex to be a way to keep the tension up over a four book series, but I can definitely see your point and how it could be read that way.